COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. , MONDAY, APRIL 21, 2025. The 2025 Canadian federal election, which may or may not be “the most important election of our lives, ” will take place exactly one week from today.

It says a lot about how short, sweet, and sometimes more or less elevated a campaign it has been over the past few weeks that this is the first time we counterweights editors have pulled ourselves together for some group comment.

We start with the French and then English TV debates — Wednesday 16 April and Thursday 17 April this past week. The Canadian Press report on the second English debate is headlined : “’You, sir, are not a change’: Party leaders target Carney in final election debate.”

To all of us the trouble with Poilievre’s rhetoric that “You, sir, are not a change” is that Mark Carney in some apparently crucial sense is for many a welcome change from Justin Trudeau.

And insofar as there are some Trudeau Liberal cabinet carry-overs, that is, as Carney himself urged in the English debate, a good thing. It seasons the fresh new faces with hard-earned experience and outstanding talent.

Or as Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin tweeted/X-posted after the English contest : “Carney’s best debate moment. ‘I know it may be difficult, Mr. Poilievre, you spent years running against Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax. They’re both gone, okay? They’re both gone.’”

(1) “This is what democracy looks like … when the debate is over”

Some of us around the boardroom table here (and on the office TV room sofas for the evenings of April 16 and 17) were slightly impressed that both debates were broadcast from Montreal on the St. Lawrence River.

It seemed to fit the possibly historic 2025 election that the TV debates came from the ancient metropolis of the east-west multicultural Fur Trade in Canada. (Which was brought to its historic peak by the North West Company [1779–1821], forerunner of the 1867 confederation that still endures, having acquired a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.)

Here at counterweights.ca we have at least agreed that our own most fundamental feelings about the debates were largely captured in a tweet/post by the Quebec Liberal activist and sometime Justin Trudeau advisor Jonathan Kalles.

The Tweet/Xpost was placed over a video of contestants shaking hands, being polite, and even somewhat friendly at the end of the English encounter : “This is what democracy looks like. This is what’s supposed to happen when the debate is over. This is what makes Canada great.”

Even if all this doesn’t quite make Canada great in the most real world, it at least induces a more settled and agreeable public life (if also more modest of course), especially than what now prevails under Donald Trump’s second disastrous administration of the USA, USA today.

We apparently agree as well that Pierre Poilievre did present an almost respectable future prime minister in the English debate in particular. Under attack as current frontrunner, however, Carney also did as well defending himself as he had to, or even somewhat better. And this seems clearly enough reflected in the opinion polls immediately after the two debates. At the same time, some pundits were nonetheless saying that Liberals should still be suitably worried. And it seems that we all cautiously agree with this too.

(2) 6 of 7 polls added today had Mark Carney’s Liberals ahead by from 5 to 8 points

Meanwhile, at the less Liberal-worrying end of the 2025 election odyssey, at 4:38 PM, April 21, 2025, Philippe J. Fournier@338Canada posted his latest Update of “Federal polls added today” on his 338Canada poll aggregation site.

Six of seven polls added — from Angus Reid, Liaison, MQO, Nanos, Pollara, and Research Co. — had Mark Carney’s Liberals ahead, by from 5 to 8 points. One poll, from Mainstreet Research, had Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives tied.

Mainstreet has also brought out earlier polls quite recently that had the Conservatives slightly ahead of the Liberals. At the same time, Mainstreet has a somewhat controversial history of mis-predicting conservative or right-wing victories in two elections won by the so-called liberal left — the 2017 Calgary mayoral contest, and a 2019 provincial by-election in BC.

Mainstreet has been closer to the mark in full-scale federal and provincial elections since 2019. According to Wikipedia : “In a comparison of polling results with election results, Mainstreet was ranked fourth in Canada by polling analyst Philippe J. Fournier.”

In any event there will be more to come on election night… and possibly before … with absolutely no doubt.

Meanwhile again, for all of us here the recent rather sudden rise of Mark Carney in Canadian federal politics has been like manna falling from heaven … And we’re certainly hoping that the 6 out of 7 polls added today finally prove right on the money …

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2025. Bill Maher has been surprised that the crazy public Donald Trump we see on TV and so forth is not the real Donald Trump you meet when you have dinner with him at Mar-a-Lago.

Unlike Mr. Maher I am a Canadian, born and raised. I have largely lived, worked, and worshiped in Canada my entire life — a circumstance shared with millions of (if by no means all) other Canadians. (In 2021 some 74% of people living in Canada [91% of whom were Canadian citizens] had been born in Canada.)

My most immediate problem with Donald Trump, in other words, is his (almost) latest attitude towards Canada.

I agree he has at least kept this attitude under the covers in the most recent past. Along with my TV-watching partner I also believe the ultimate crux of Donald Trump’s now altogether clearly expressed hatred of Canada as an independent country flows from the patently obvious attraction of the two most important women in his life to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Whatever its deepest source, this hatred was finally expressed so strongly early in 2025 that many Canadians (a very solid majority on all the polling evidence I’ve seen) cannot possibly entertain any good thoughts about Donald Trump — even of the sort Bill Maher has been offering lately.

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2025. Nothing captures the bizarre concoction of arrogance and ignorance shown by both President Trump II and so many who work for him as the 10% US tariff they have foisted on two islands near Antarctica, inhabited only by penguins (and some of their friends, the seals).

To ice the cake, one of the president’s over-aggressive and allegedly eminent accomplices has almost at the same time urged a TV audience to just let Donald Trump fix the global economy.

Again and again over the next three years and seven months ??

The obvious first question is what role will the penguins on the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands play in the new economic structure? Or, of course, how can anyone of any sense at all trust a US federal administration that puts tariffs on islands of penguins to even fail honourably in such a vast and complex enterprise as restructuring the world economy?

To be altogether fair, it seems that some blame here must be shouldered by World Bank statistics.

Perhaps because “some goods may have been mislabeled as coming from the territory,” the World Bank apparently had the penguins exporting “about $1.4 million worth of … unspecified ‘machinery and electrical’ products to the U.S. in 2022 … while the U.S. exported about $21,600 to the islands in the same year.”

Down on the ground, in fact (and of course again), the penguins do not have any machinery and electrical manufacturing plants on the Heard and McDonald islands. And they might find a few crates of Florida oranges attractive, but do they really know how to peel them properly?

Whatever, President Trump II has been in office only two months and change. Already his aging mind has managed to transfer some of its own vast chaos and anxiety to the wider global village, in ways that even close students of Trump I may not have expected.

The inevitable question is just what’s next? And it may arise again and again over the next three years and seven months.

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SPECIAL FROM ROB SPARROW, HIGH PARK, TORONTO. MARCH 26, 2025. Calling the 2024 Toronto Blue Jays anything less than a disaster would be generous. This was a team built to contend—at least in theory—but instead, it collapsed in historic fashion, ending with a dismal 74-88 record, finishing dead last in the AL East for the first time since 2013.

The numbers tell the story of an offensive collapse years in the making. The Blue Jays’ runs scored cratered from 846 in 2021 to 671 in 2024 – their lowest full-season total since 1997. Home runs – down from 262 in 2021 (the most in baseball) to just 156, the worst long-ball output in a full season since 2008. Batting average – down to .241, the team’s worst since the early ‘80s, when beloved broadcaster Buck Martinez was the team’s light-hitting catcher.

It didn’t help that the roster was constructed around the flawed hope that internal improvement could offset previous mistakes.

Moreover, the strategic decision over the past couple years to prioritize “run prevention” over offensive firepower—exemplified by trading away of Fan Favourites and Home Run Jacket founding members Teoscar Hernández and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.—has backfired badly.

A) Last Place Finish…Rotten to the Core…

In one sense, the 2024 season was a referendum on the Mark Shapiro-Ross Atkins front office, now entering its 10th year. When they took over in 2016, they inherited an aging but playoff-calibre roster. The teardown that followed was supposed to lay the foundation for a sustainable winner. Sure, the Jays endured bad years in 2018 and 2019, but those were expected rebuilding seasons. The unexpected playoff appearance in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, and the near miss by a game in the 2021 season, raised expectations that the 2020s decade of Blue Jay baseball held much promise.

Instead, both the 2022 and 2023 seasons concluded in two game wild card sweeps, ending with both a thump and a whimper. The thump being the collapse against the Mariners in ‘22 when they led 8-1 in Game 2, and the whimper being their loss to the Twins in ’23, headlined by their aggressive move to lift José Berríos early, and being held to just one run over the two-game series.

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RANDALL WHITE, CANADA’S CAPITAL FROM 4 ½ HOURS WEST. TOWN OF EAST TORONTO, ON. SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2025. So in Ottawa this past Friday, March 14 Mark Carney was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Canada, along with the other 23 members of his new leaner federal cabinet, at the head of his “new Canadian government.”

Already there is polling evidence that the new Mark Carney Liberals — not quite the same as the old Justin Trudeau Liberals, though there are inevitable common cabinet ministers — just might have a bright new future.

(1) Some polling evidence on Carney

The Carney Liberals could even defeat the sloganeering Pierre Poilievre Conservatives, in the snap federal election that PM Carney is widely expected to call very soon.

(Possibly even before the scheduled return of the Canadian House of Commons on Monday, March 24?)

An EKOS poll taken March 10–13 showed a dramatic 50% popular support for the Liberals under their new leader Mark Carney, elected March 9. Conservatives were at 32%, and New Democrats at a dismal 8%.

Numbers like this could mean something as widely thought crazily impossible only a few months ago as a Liberal majority government, in the coming snap election.

Meanwhile, in Mainstreet polls since late last year Conservatives have fallen from 47% popular support around November 21, 2024 to 39% around March 12, 2025. Between the same two dates New Democrats have even more precipitously fallen from 17% to 8%.

Liberals have risen from 17% to 41%. (At least 2 points ahead of the Conservatives — not as buoyant as the EKOS poll putting them 18 points ahead , but still ahead!)

(2) Swearing allegiance to King Charles III quaintly obsolete at best

As far as the ceremonial swearing-in of Mr. Carney and his cabinet itself goes, I share rhe views of my many fellow supporters of a free and democratic Canadian republic, not too much further down the road.

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COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2025. [UPDATED MARCH 9, 11 PM ET — scroll to bottom]. Justin Trudeau’s press conference in Ottawa this morning warmed our Canadian hearts.

The CTV News written report is somewhat misleadingly headlined “Trudeau vows to not be ‘caretaker’ PM, gets emotional at one of his last events.” The mainstream mass media (MMM?) have been part of the virtually systematic domestic denigration of Pierre Trudeau’s eldest son, that has (probably) at last started to seem to more than a few like a big mistake.

We counterweights editors are with Angie Rivers at the Waterloo Regional Police in Ontario, who posted this about PM Justin Trudeau yesterday : “Love him or hate him, you have to admit he hits it out of the park in a crisis.” To us that would be a more apt headline for the CTV news report this morning than the as-usual-belittling “PM, gets emotional at one of his last events.”

To us as well, what PM Trudeau did this morning on TV was (quite casually) summarize what it is about Canada that has deep roots in an indigenous and migrant past, and a long and prosperous future ahead of it, in a new world order only very gradually starting to take shape!

We disagree with Justin Trudeau passionately about the role of the British monarchy in this future — and in the Canadian present, but beyond that somewhat symbolic (albeit very important) issue we feel strongly that he has been a good prime minister of Canada, 2015–2025.

Until recently we also unhappily anticipated that this level of good leadership would be missing over the next four years, as a Canadian Trumpish (if not quite Trumpian?) regime clone came to office in Ottawa in 2025. But that was before a transformation long awaited in some Canadian circles arrived on the scene at last.

A chart recently released by the Leger polling organization nicely summarizes the raw numbers behind this transformation. In their Canadian federal polling work, Leger notes, the Conservatives have fallen in popularity from 47% of poll respondents on January 12, 2025 to 38% on February 22, 2025. Between the same two dates — a mere six weeks apart — the New Democrats also fell from 17% to 14%.

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RANDALL WHITE, ONTARIO TONITE, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2025. [UPDATED FEBRUARY 27 ELECTION DAY/NIGHT].Word from Washington, DC is that the Premier of the 11th Province (can’t quite remember her name — Donalda … ?) has no interest in the coming Thursday, February 27 election in what used to be Canada’s most populous province.

(And Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s latest trip to Washington, in the midst of his provincial election campaign, has not roused the Dumpster from signing overwrought executive orders in between golf games — or from adding to his bizarre attack on good neighbour Canada!)

Meanwhile, the “snap” Ontario election this coming Thursday — called by Premier Ford well in advance of the legislated “fixed date” Ontario election scheduled for June 4, 2026 — follows the 2022 election which boasted the lowest voter turnout in the province’s entire history since 1867 (not quite 44%!). And the biggest question about the February 27, 2025 election probably is whether turnout this year will be even lower than it was on June 2, 2022?.

In at least one sense the people of Ontario cannot be blamed if this is what happens. Premier Ford has managed to concoct a quite meaningless but politically clever contest in which his alleged “Progressive Conservative” party (or just “PC” as they like to say these days) is almost certain to win — with well under a majority of the province-wide popular vote!

The numbers behind Premier Ford’s very early snap election call of 2025 are essentially the same now — the weekend before the vote on February 27, 2025 — as when he called the election back on January 28, 2025. (And in effect several days before : still not very long ago, not much more than a month. And then subsequently even the weather seems to be boosting the sordid cause of the Ontario PCs, with vast snowfalls complicating everyday life in many parts of the province, and dissuading some contrary-minded citizens from voting in an election that the premier seems bound to win in any case.)

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RANDALL WHITE, IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE TODAY. TORONTO. FEBRUARY 18, 2025. Justin Trudeau’s Canada has been one of the strongest supporters of an independent Ukraine extant — morally (so to speak), rhetorically, symbolically, and in some degree financially (if not exactly or quite militarily).

Part of this flows from Canada’s status as what The Guardian in the UK has called the “world’s second largest Ukrainian diaspora.” (And note especially, eg, Justin Trudeau’s former minister of finance and deputy prime minister, and current Liberal leadership candidate, “Chrystia Freeland, who grew up in a tight-knit rural Ukrainian community” in Alberta.)

Yet another more narrowly political reality also contributes to Canada’s strong support for Ukrainian independence, especially after the Russian invasion that began on February 24, 2022 — and the resulting “war” that Trump and Putin may or may not be trying to resolve, in some unlikely way that will mostly benefit Russia.

As clarified by Trump’s latest ranting about the 51st state (due north of the USA), his view of Canada has a lot in common with Putin’s view of Ukraine. (Or Putin’s view of Ukraine has a lot in common with Trump’s view of Canada!)

(a) Trump inadvertently draws on the depths of American political culture

Both men see the adjacent smaller country (well, in population in Canada’s case at least) as some kind of inherent or otherwise logical part of the genial but far from gentle giant next door. Both men have 21st century imperial ambitions, for themselves and the countries they claim to personify.

In the case of Trump’s America there is a long history of seeing Canada as in truth just another unacknowledged part of the USA — especially on the right-conservative (as opposed to left-progressive) side of US politics.

Trump may be bringing something closer to the end of Democracy in America than any US presidential figure before (leaving Jefferson Davis aside). But in his ultimate attitude to Canada — as in so much else — he is inadvertently drawing on the depths of American political culture.

The relevant history includes the War of 1812–1814 in North America — the modern American Republic’s last great attempt to invade Canada. The Canada that was not successfully invaded then (thanks to the seasoned troops of the British empire, and their North American native allies under Chief Tecumseh, a successor to Chief Pontiac) went on to become the early Canadian confederation under the Constitution Act, 1867 … and then finally the present-day altogether independent “free and democratic society” of Canada under the Constitution Act, 1982 (with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

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RANDALL WHITE, ONTARIO TONITE, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2025. As explained by Queen’s Park reporter Laura Stone this past Friday, “Ontario Premier Doug Ford confirms early election — ‘We will be calling the election next Wednesday … We need a mandate from the people to fight against Donald Trump’s tariffs…we will not back down,’ he tells reporters.”

As independent Ottawa reporter Dale Smith (among many others) has observed : “He doesn’t need a mandate. He already has one … He’s trying to use Trump to make you forget about his corruption and mismanagement.”

As my favourite local TV has somewhat similarly pointed out, more than once, Premier Ford’s Ontario PC Party currently has, in the wake of the June 2, 2022 record low voter turnout Ontario election, 79 seats in a 124-member Legislative Assembly of Ontario — where 63 seats would be a bare majority.

What’s more, the next legislated fixed-date Ontario election is not until June 2026 — some four years after the last fixed-date election on June 2, 2022. The Ford government — elected in 2022 by less than 41% of the record low 44% of voters who turned out — currently has a 16-seat majority in the legislature. It can get whatever fresh legislation it likes in any fight against Donald Trump’s tariffs, or anything else. So why go to the considerable expense of a fresh “snap election” that is unlikely to give the provincial Government of Ontario much more of a mandate from the people (in seats in the legislature at least) than it has right now?

(1) Doug Ford’s smart political argument makes no sense legally or constitutionally

To answer this question we must go beneath the superficial surface of democracy in Canada 2025. For an assortment of reasons (including what Dale Smith calls “his corruption and mismanagement”) Premier Ford has wisely enough concluded that his Ontario PC party is more likely to win an election held now — or more exactly some four weeks hence, on February 27, 2025 — than at any subsequent time between now and the June 2026 fixed election date.

In a more rigorous and sensible version of our Canadian (and Ontario etc) parliamentary democracy than the one we have right now, the Lieutenant Governor from whom Premier Ford formally requested a dissolution of parliament and a fresh election (the Honourable Edith Dumont) might in this case have raised some very sensible objections.

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RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2025. So far the height of the Canadian mainstream media response to Donald Trump’s latest absurd remarks on the Canadian future must be this past Saturday, January 11, 2025 op-ed in the Globe and Mail by Jean Chrétien, 20th prime minister of Canada, 1993–2003. (And a Canadian also celebrating his 91st birthday on January 11, 2025.)

The final “full letter” (to the Globe as it were, or even to all Canadians as readers of what at least used to call itself Canada’s National Newspaper) was soon enough made available online, even to those among us who do not subscribe to the Globe and Mail.

This full letter is a rather long piece by former PM Chrétien (1095 words on my count). Yet as one might expect it is equally a collection of somewhat folksy but pithy wise remarks on assorted subjects related to the future of Canada (and the United States next door of course).

On the over-arching main subject M. Chrétien just says, early on : “Of course, it’s about the totally unacceptable insults and unprecedented threats to our sovereignty from Donald Trump.”

(1) Some progress on two very clear and simple messages

The former (Liberal) Canadian tough-guy prime minister — “Le petit gars de Shawinigan” — went on : “I have two very clear and simple messages … To Donald Trump, from one old man to another: Wake up! What makes you think that Canadians would ever give up the greatest country in the world? And make no mistake, that’s what we are.”

Somewhat further along Jean Chrétien turned to : ”We built a nation on the most rugged and difficult terrain imaginable, and we did it against all odds. We may seem easygoing and gentle, but make no mistake: we are determined and tough … And that brings me to my second message—to all our leaders, federal and provincial, and to those who aspire to lead our country: Start showing that determination and tenacity.”

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